What makes Morrowind superior to Oblivion?

[Zomg]

Around the time Oblivion came out it was still the hrdkr Codex opinion to regard Morrowind as outright trash (or seemed to be, anyway). This no longer seems to be the communal wisdom.

My critical thumbnail sketch of Morrowind is (in no significant order):

Terrible combat (the core gameplay) - completely uninteresting after about thirty minutes into the game.
Terrible character development - completely misdesigned, it facilitates only irritation.
Poor quests - Virtually all of them are unambitious and their main function is to set you hiking through the striking landscapes.
Terrible roleplaying (in the sense of expressing a character for the PC(s) in the context of a gameworld) - The world is almost perfectly static and untouched by your actions, the questlines are mostly linear and compartmentalized (up to and including becoming the boss of mutually opposed groups without any of the obvious feedback) and in general there is never a sense of character to the PC.
Good "lore", with excellent presentation as a mass of slowly integrating information that you pick up in random scraps.
Good visual design.

The "Offline MMORPG" description is apt.

I haven't played Oblivion. My impression is that the combat is improved, the character development is nearly identical, the quests are elementally better yet they suffer from velvet glove features like the quest compass, the roleplaying and static world problems are unchanged, and the lore and visual design are shifted towards generic fantasy.

Is that accurate? Is there a sunnier interpretation of Morrowind to compare it to?

 

[theverybigslayer]

I don't know. I only know what makes Arena and Daggerfall superior to Morrowind and Oblivion

 

[Hamster]

Setting. At least it was fun to walk around and look at all those strange structures and stuff.

 

[Walkin' Dude]

Because Oblivion managed to take all of the bad elements of Morrowind and make them worse, while at the same time removing what few good things it had going for it.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Setting. At least it was fun to walk around and look at all those strange structures and stuff.

Yeah this. All of the Elder Scrolls games are boring as fuck, but Morrowind made, as Jasede put it, "a good hiking simulator" due to the setting.

 

[Raapys]

Oblivion is pretty much worse than Morrowind in all ways except combat and the horrible failure that was RAI(but which was still a step up from the completely static MW NPCs).

 

[Vault Dweller]

Around the time Oblivion came out it was still the hrdkr Codex opinion to regard Morrowind as outright trash (or seemed to be, anyway).

I don't think it was the case. It was regarded as a disappointment, but it was also a "must play game of 2002" by 3 out of 4 admins.

Like I said in another thread, comparing to Oblivion, Morrowind is a masterpiece.

 

[JarlFrank]

Morrowind looked beautiful. It had shitty graphics, okay, but great art design. It had an interesting setting. A shitload of stuff to explore and find out about. A better equipment system than Oblivion [more different armor parts, wearing clothing beneath armor etc]. A more interesting world and story, especially in the two expansions. At least a small sense of challenge and accomplishment as the level-scaling wasn't as horrible as in Oblivion and you could get fucked by high-level monsters in high-level areas. Better writing. No handholding at all.

And: A shitload of really good mods that improved about everything from the shitty character models over the textures to the combat. Many content-adding mods like Morrowind Advanced and mods like Sea of Destiny which added whole new areas.

In short: Morrowind was a way better game with a more interesting world to explore, and those things it did worse than Oblivion [graphics and combat] could be improved by mods. The sheer fact that you could always find something interesting while exploring makes it way better than Oblivion, which became boring after the tenth completely level-scaled dungeon.

 

[barker_s]

Around the time Oblivion came out it was still the hrdkr Codex opinion to regard Morrowind as outright trash (or seemed to be, anyway).

Then I guess I'm not hardcore enough, because I like it pretty much.

There's one element that makes Morrowind better than Oblivion - lack of level scaling (or rather not so obvious one). In MW you could enter a dungeon and meet enemies that could easily defeat you. You could also find some cool equipment.
In Oblivion you enter a dungeon and you find loot/enemies adequate to your level. There's a chest and you know that inside you'll find 10-50 gold pieces and 1-2 potions. It takes all the fun from exploration.

as Jasede put it, "a good hiking simulator" due to the setting.

Yeah, he keeps saying that all the time to hide the truth that he loves this game. Mainly because of Khajiit and Argonians .

 

[Damned Registrations]

Morrowind had a lot of interesting details in it when you looked around. Also, becoming head of the fighters guild involves murdering the most important theives guild members. Aside from that, they're all pretty much mercenary organizations, so it's not really surprising that most of them don't give a fuck what you do (Although the imperial guard shouldn't let you do a lot of the things you do in the fighter's guild.)

Morrowind actually has a lot of interesting dungeons and quests. Tombs with peoples ashes in them, dead adventurers with diaries or notes nearby, and cool situations in general. Most of it is related to some quest or another, but finding the Sarano ebony helm in a tomb doesn't automatically start a 'find the sarano helm' quest complete with homing beacons. Stealing made much more sense- you could sell stolen goods as long as it was to someone of a different faction. Morrowind also had a _lot_ of very interesting books in it. Oblivion copied a bunch of the books and added in some crappy books too.

Morrowind was level scaled, but there were still powerful objects set in place all around the world. High ranking guards always had good weapons regardless of your level, looting a dead one at low level was a major boon. Doing that in oblivion was a joke- the finest knights in the game guarding the emperor at the beginning have shitty ass steel or iron armor and weapons? Wtf? And all the imperial guards too? There was ONE placed real high quality item in oblivion, and it was a magic glass helm underwater in the ass end of nowhere- basically an easter egg. The first time I played morrowind I had an artifact ring within 15 minutes scrounged from the first dungeon I ever went into. I shortly thereafter acquired a powerful helm from another dungeon I got through by basically running my ass through it without fighting and barely escaping. You could rob all sorts of major treasuries and shops in Morrowind and they'd have awesome gear- do that in Oblivion and they have trash and fakes.

Morrowind also had levitation and made use of it for lots of interesting dungeon designs. They removed it in oblivion because they were too retarded to even design dungeons you couldn't skip to the boss of (Why the fuck they even needed bosses I don't know) simply by jumping really high, let alone levitating. And bosses were the only thing in oblivion worth killing- everything else had useless loot scaled below your level.

Morrowind was a good hiking simulator because not only were their cool places and creatures to look at, but also cool items and stories to find. Every time I play morrowind I end up having a stash of cool things I've found laying somewhere on display. Pretty much all of them have a cool backstory. Most of the unique things in oblivion come from some really boring soulless quest and aren't even valuable at the level you got it.

Then theres the retarded minigames in Oblivion that make several skills (And they already cut the number of skills by a third) useless. Now sure, I can go through morrowind with some pretty crappy skill levels if I be cheesy and steal and enchant my way into being a god at level 5, but that was at least an issue of exploits like enhancing your mercantile skill by 100 for 1 second being a 'minor' spell that gave you basically infinite gold. In oblivion I could literally make a summoning character and never do anything but cast my best summon spell. It'd completely rape everything I ran into because of their shit level scaling design. You can;t even advance very far in most of the guilds in morrowind without having high skills and stats appropriate for that guild.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Thanks for reminding us that it was also unbalanced as fuck, DamnedRegistrations.

 

[Serious_Business]

This no longer seems to be the communal wisdom.

Decline of the Codex.

(I mean it seriously, and not as a meme)

 

[J1M]

Around the time Oblivion came out it was still the hrdkr Codex opinion to regard Morrowind as outright trash (or seemed to be, anyway). This no longer seems to be the communal wisdom.

My critical thumbnail sketch of Morrowind is (in no significant order):

Terrible combat (the core gameplay) - completely uninteresting after about thirty minutes into the game.
Terrible character development - completely misdesigned, it facilitates only irritation.
Poor quests - Virtually all of them are unambitious and their main function is to set you hiking through the striking landscapes.
Terrible roleplaying (in the sense of expressing a character for the PC(s) in the context of a gameworld) - The world is almost perfectly static and untouched by your actions, the questlines are mostly linear and compartmentalized (up to and including becoming the boss of mutually opposed groups without any of the obvious feedback) and in general there is never a sense of character to the PC.
Good "lore", with excellent presentation as a mass of slowly integrating information that you pick up in random scraps.
Good visual design.

The "Offline MMORPG" description is apt.

I haven't played Oblivion. My impression is that the combat is improved, the character development is nearly identical, the quests are elementally better yet they suffer from velvet glove features like the quest compass, the roleplaying and static world problems are unchanged, and the lore and visual design are shifted towards generic fantasy.

Is that accurate? Is there a sunnier interpretation of Morrowind to compare it to?

It's older which means people remember less of how crappy it was. I honestly think it is funny that people don't just refer to them as the same thing. They were practically the same.

 

[Bluebottle]

Strange that I tried firing up Morrowind for the first time in years today. It didn't stay installed for all that long.

The thing I always found amazing about Morrowind was just how much potential it managed to have, while never actually pulling any of it together into a good gaming experience. Because of its massive scope, and tons of potential, it did seem to keep those new to TES gripped for quite some time (myself included) while you explored it all, always thinking that the fun was just around the corner. Of course, because of the similarity between TESIII and IV I think this contributed to Oblivion disappointing the establised TES fans so accutely. They wanted to see the issues really fixed, and instead they found themselves again in this ongoing search for the decent gameplay.

I think I'd look on Morrowind a lot more favourably had Bethesda ever managed to make good on the potential that they laid down in it, in their future games.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The sheer fact that you could always find something interesting while exploring makes it way better than Oblivion, which became boring after the tenth completely level-scaled dungeon.

this

 

[Ratty]

Vanilla Morrowind is a game with great setting and solid writing, but subpar gameplay and limited roleplaying. Pretty good, but overrated.

Morrowind with Bloodmoon expansion and balance-fixing mods is a modern classic that every true roleplayer should have in their collection (I don't).

Oblivion fails on every level except technical execution and doesn't even deserve to be brought up in the same sentence as its predecessor.

 

[dragonfk]

Why Morrowind is better than Oblivion?

Atmosphere.

 

[barker_s]

Where the hell does that screen come from?

 

[DefJam101]

Jesus christ how many gigs of graphics mods does that have installed?

 

[JarlFrank]

*Which* graphics mods is the more important question.

 

[Imbecile]

snip

That sums things up pretty well, however the use leveled loot and enemies was just imbecilic in Oblivion, whereas it worked well in Morrowind. Oblivion might have worked just as well as Morrowind as a "Hiking sim" had there been stuff worth looking for, but with the hand placed loot replaced by leveled blandness, Morrowinds main strength was destroyed in one fell swoop.

Other than that its shitness when compare to Morrowind is greatly exaggerated.

 

[Trash]

Morrowind had some good artwork and an interesting gameworld that was fun to explore. Other than that it was as boring as or even more boring than Oblivion.

 

[sportforredneck]

I never beat Morrowind, I found it way too boring. Of course the first time I played it took 4 hours to find Cosades, but that's besides the point. It had some nice art direction and I dug on the music. But it was incredibly boring. And it's not like I didn't play it enough, I played through most of the fighters guild (another game most of the imperial guard) and did quite a bit of the main quest. But it just felt so boring the whole time. Oblivion on the other hand, I beat easily. Mostly due to the epic amounts of hand holding that made it so I barely had to play the game. So Oblivion was bad, and Morrowind was okay. There's my ringing endorsement.

 

[Jamshh]

Oblivion was designed for every man and his dog. Console embellishment of the highest order (coming from a 360-user).

That said, I was hyped and took to the game immensely upon release. Looking back now, however, it is easier to critique the game for its shortfall of content, care, etc.

Don't forget paid-for content. Again, as a 360-user, this is insulting. I just can't believe I've bought half of it.

 

[King Crispy]

IMO, Morrowind proudly retained its more sandboxey feel and did less to insult the creativity and intelligence of its users than Oblivion did.

Anyone know/remember which of the designers at BSW had left between MW's and Ob's releases? Was that when Todd came on or was he already there?